~ Researching Russell Co, Kentucky

Category Archives: Organization

Yesterday, I posted a “Snack” about coming up with a naming template for digital file names. When coming up with your system, be sure to think of all of the information that you might ever need in the file name. Make sure your template will work with all types of records – photographs, downloaded documents, Word docs, etc.

My template: Year County State SourceInfo Page Name (identifier)

Here are some naming hints I’ve learned the hard way:

County name is not enough. I have spent years researching Russell County so why would I ever need any information on location beyond that? Well, when I started emailing my DNA matches and asking about Russell County, I started getting responses about Russell County, VIRGINIA instead of Kentucky. I knew then that I needed to go back through all of my files and adding “KY” to the names so that who other people who received my files would not be confused.

Think about multiple people with the same name. Families tend to use the same names through the generations. Like I mentioned yesterday, I have 2 brothers in my tree named George and Elias Smith. George had a son named Elias and Elias had a son named George. I must be able to tell the men apart when looking at the file names. That’s when I started using identifiers. Usually, I use (birth year – death year). So I have Elias Smith (1810 – 1853) and Elias Smith (1845 – 1885). In another example, I have a group of 5 men named “John Smith” in Mercer County, Kentucky, all in the same time period. Luckily, in a tax records, there are a times that occupations or nicknames were given. I use those as identifiers, when I have the information.

Keep it consistent. As I was getting used to my system, I used “Russell County KY” for some files and “Russell Co KY” for others. Make a decision before you get going. It is much easier to notice “abnormalities” when all of the file names follow the same format.

Page numbers are important. If I have multiple deeds for the same person in the same deed book, I could run into several files with the exact same name. I can also use the information to create source citations without opening the file. If you run into a source that didn’t have page numbers (loose papers, un-numbered certificates, etc), consider adding image numbers instead. For example: 1862 Russell Co KY Marriage Records Book 3 FamilySearch Image 124 John Smith and Sally Jones.

Using my system, all of the records appear in chronological order – that gives me a timeline showing where each ancestor was. It’s not unusual to see when county boundaries changed or when a family moved. Depending on how I organize files within my folders, I can see where every person in a family is located at the same time – without opening a single file.

If a “stray” county appears where it wasn’t expected, that’s the abnormality part. Either I have a record that isn’t my family, or I have a county that I need to do additional research in. Perhaps a family member moved there. Do I know why?

Here is my example. Russell County was formed at the end of 1825. Notice that in the image below, the records change from Wayne County to Russell County around that same time. Assuming the family didn’t move, I can narrow down a person’s location within the county based on the boundary line changes.

Whatever template you decide to use, nail down your details and use little bits of “snack time” to confirm that all of your file names follow it.

Many genealogists follow the 3-2-1 plan when it comes to keeping their genealogy research safe. 3 copies on 2 different media (DVD/external/cloud) with 1 copy off-site. Since cloud storage can help us check off a section in all 3 parts, it’s a great idea to start there.

I don’t want to spend a ton of time talking about which Cloud service to use. I’ll just list basic information for what I think of as the top 3 services:

Dropbox – 2GB of free storage with the ability to earn up to 16GB by completing various tasks.

Google Drive – 15GB of free storage

OneDrive – 5 GB of free storage

I actually have all 3 of these on my PC. All 3 have apps that I have on my iPad so I can access my files on the go.

I have 2 Dropbox accounts – one for my business and one for my genealogy. My laptop is synced with my business account, so I don’t usually use that for genealogy, but that was my very first toe dip into saving to the cloud. It was the way that I could access my genealogy files from school during my lunch break.

Long ago, I began using SkyDrive, which later became OneDrive.

When I came up with my current digital folder system, I began using Google Drive because it had more free storage than any other system – and because I could get an additional 15GB just by using a different gmail address. I have one gmail address for all of my husband’s family research and a different gmail address for my family.

I would move files one-by-one from my OneDrive folders to my new folders in Google Drive and I would rename each file using my updated naming system for every record as it was being added. After a file was moved, it was deleted from OneDrive so that I could keep track of where I was. As I got close to the “end” of these files, I opened another folder that only had a date on it and discovered…duplicates of everything I had just moved! So now I think of that as the backup to my backup. I know it’s silly, but I just can’t bring myself to delete them all again – just in case.

My cloud accounts shows up in my computer Explorer just like any other file folder. I don’t even have to have internet connection to access the files. But you do have to have connection to sync your files in the cloud. Whenever I work on my research, I always work directly from these folders so that everything is automatically updated.

Now let’s think about the 3…2…1 plan.

3 copies – You hate to think about it, but in the event of a fire/flood/tornado, how much of your research would you lose? Perhaps a good plan would be to have a paper copy, a cloud copy and a copy on an external drive.

2 different devices – if your computer fails/crashes, where else would you look? You should have a backup on a different device like an external drive or a cloud account. But what’s the difference between using an external drive and a cloud account? The difference is that you usually have to initiate a backup to an external drive – perhaps on the first of every month. A good cloud account will update every record as soon as you save it.

1 copy off-site. I think this really used to be more of an issue for me with paper copies. Now, I tend to think of my photographs. When my children were little, I always got double prints when I’d get my film developed. My mom always got one set. If you have your research in the cloud, you can consider that to be “off-site”.

If you don’t already have a cloud account that you keep your research in, this might be a good time to consider which service would work best for you!

As I have been organizing my DNA matches, I have found a surprising number of people who are related through 2 different lines. For these people, I have created an Excel doc that has an area for each tree.

For these situations, I have a page that is intended to be folded in half before adding to my 5.5 x 8.5 planner. If I ever decide that I need a larger book such as a 3 ring binder for DNA information, then I would use all of my sheets “as is”. No folding or cutting in half.

For these sheets, I have included a larger area for notes as well. As I research each line, I can keep notes on communications I’ve had with this DNA cousin as well as notes about documentation that I have found that tie the two lines together.

In addition to the 4 kits that I manage for my Mom and her siblings, I also manage a kit for their first cousin. When cM numbers seem “out of whack” such as when this cousin has a MUCH higher number of cMs than the siblings, I can use the 2nd chart to show that. He may be related through his paternal side (my Mom’s side) as well as through his maternal side – which my Mom and her siblings are not. Even through the 2nd chart will show a relationship that is not part of my direct line, it helps me to understand why the cM numbers seem to be inconsistent.

I have jumped into the DNA pool with both feet. To say that it has become an obsession would not be an overstatement. And as I learn more about it and begin to interact more with DNA cousins, I have had to develop a system for keeping track of information. If you have Russell County connections and you are on GEDmatch, I would love to have your number to compare with my kits! I will add my kit numbers to the About Me tab.

I love the format that Ancestry uses for showing you how another user is connected to you based on their DNA plus Tree. If a person has a DNA match to you AND they have a tree with a common ancestor in it, they show that person’s path to the ancestor right next to yours. And if you are related through more than one person, they will show you that as well.

I want to be able to keep track of these connections as well as be able to track when a person’s DNA results are also on another cite – especially GEDmatch.

I have created several different sheets, but I thought I’d share them one at a time. I keep tweaking them as I use them more, but I’m pretty happy with this first sheet. After I post each sheet, I will update the Downloads tab at the top of the page to include every sheet.

My sheets are designed to go into my Genealogy Planner, so there are 2 sheets per page which are made to be cut in half and hole punched to fit in a 5.5 x 8.5 planner. The layout is landscape and the margins are .25 on the top and bottom, .2 on the left and right.

My first page is like a “Contact” page. I have the person’s name, if known. Many times, I won’t know a person’s real name until we connect through the messaging system on Ancestry or through email if I’m using GEDmatch. You don’t want to keep referring to someone as DrummerBoy once you know their real name! I have the Excel sheet set up so that the name that I type in this area also shows up on the side of the sheet so when I am flipping through my pages, I can find the name faster.

On the right corner, I have Paternal/Maternal. I simply delete the text that doesn’t apply. I keep these organized in my Planner based on my Maternal and Paternal Grandparents. Below that line, I have 3 lines for the surnames that we match on.

You can also see that in the middle, I have a column to keep track of which chromosome(s) we have in common. You cannot find this information on Ancestry, but any site that has a chromosome browser will allow you to see this.

In the next section, I keep track of user names for each of the sites that I use. It’s not uncommon for someone to have their results on more than one site, but they don’t always have the same name. So a test might be “B.C.” on Ancestry, “Aunt Barbara” on FTDNA and her full name on MyHeritage. GEDmatch assigns every kit with a number, but the person uploading the information gets to decide if they will use an alias or a real name.

In an area to the right that’s not meant to be printed, I have a chart to help me keep track of how many shared cMs each of my kits has with a cousin’s kit(s). I then use Jing to take a screen clipping of this information and I paste it into the area titled “cM shared”. On the right side, I have not merged the cells so that if I only have information for 1 person who matches 1 of my kits, I can use the lines to add that information instead of a table. So far, I have always ended up merging those cells and using my table, but I wanted to leave the option in there. I also try to always tell where the numbers are coming from because the different sites do not calculate shared cMs the same way.

In the bottom section, I have the Ancestry-like relationship chart and a blank line for me to enter the calculated relationship.

I prefer rounded corners on my boxes, so these borders are created by adding a shape on top of the cell. You must click in the center of the cell or your text will not appear because Excel will think that you are adding to the shape if you click on its border. If you find this frustrating, you can always delete the shapes and add a border around each cell. Text wrapping is turned on, but you can force a line return by typing Alt + Enter if you want to force the female name onto the 2nd line within the cell.

I have a 2nd sheet within the Excel workbook that includes blank lines for notes that can be printed on the back side of the contact sheet. Sometimes, my notes are nothing more than the date that I tried to contact a person, and I do have a short area for notes on the front for that. But sometimes, if a cousin and I are researching together, I also keep notes to help me remember what I’m keeping my eyes out for.

I hope you find these forms as helpful as I have! There will be more DNA sheets to come over the next couple of weeks!

A little while back, I had a question from Tammy who asked how I organize my digital files. I was hoping to answer her question much sooner, but “life” got in the way. Sorry for taking so long Tammy!

Everyone needs to have a system that works best for their own thought process. But here is an overview of what I do.

First, I wanted to have a place in the cloud where I could access every document whenever and wherever I want. I decided to use Google Drive for a number of reasons:

15 GB of free storage for each gmail account.

It doesn’t matter if I’m on my home computer, library computer, family history center computer or iPad – I can look at these files from anywhere.

The ability to organize files for specific lines simply by having a different email address for each line. For example, I have several different gmail accounts and one of those accounts is specifically for my mother’s family and another is specifically for my mother-in-law’s family. These are the 2 lines that I do the majority of my research in. I do have accounts for my father’s and father-in-law’s families as well.

It’s easy to share a folder with a cousin who is also researching the same line. They can also add documents to the Drive folders.

In this image, the top account is my work email and the remaining accounts are all genealogy related. I do have a couple of additional accounts, but they don’t show up in my list because I haven’t used them in a while.

Another advantage to having several email addresses is that I can email documents directly to a specific email address and know that they will be waiting for me to sign in and get them where they need to be. No more wondering which flash-drive something is on.

Once I’ve signed into an account, I am able to access the Google Drive that I need.

Level 1

Within each Drive, I’ve created a set of folders to match my 5 gen chart. I have them numbered so that they appear in my Drive in the same order as they appear in my chart. I call this Level 1 of the system. If I have a significant number of records for another generation back, that is also indicated in the folder name. For example, folder 3 has files for Scott and Wade.

I do have a few additional folders based on whatever documents I have. For example, a folder just for maps and another for research aids.

Level 2

Each surname folder you see here contains 5 folders.

Level 2

These folders are based on the way that I keep my research. I do have genealogy software, but I rarely use it. I use Ancestry extensively and I try to upload any documents to my Ancestry account that I have not found through Ancestry. This gives me a 2nd backup if anything were to happen to my files. I also keep detailed notes for each person, so I don’t like to take additional time to add details and citations to a software program. One thing that I do use genealogy software for is for printing charts and reports. When I need that, I usually download my Gedcom from Ancestry for the sole purpose of printing the chart.

Level 3

Excel:

I use Excel extensively so I keep all Excel files that I create for a specific surname in the Excel folder. This would include any databases I am putting together, timelines, resource lists, etc.

Group Sheets:

I have my own Group Sheet template that I use, so all Groups Sheets for a specific surname (or FANs for that surname) go into that folder.

There are times when there are 2 men with the same name, so I name these group sheets with the man’s name, (birth year-death year) and the wife’s name. That way, I can quickly tell if Group Sheets are for 2 different men or for the same man with more than one wife.

Just a note that the Mercer County Smith’s are a potential line that I am following, so they get a folder of their own.

Notes:

I keep very detailed, chronological notes for each couple that I am researching. These are Word docs that get updated every time I find a new source, so those are all in the Notes folder.

In these notes, I add

Document images

Links to documents saved on Google Drive

Transcriptions of sources

Maps from the time period

News clippings

Notes on what I’d expect to find – for example, a pre-1850 census yet to be located

Theories I’m trying to prove or questions I need to research further

Correspondence with “cousins”

Posts from this blog to help me remember a thought process or to keep track of what I planned to research next. Because quite often, a significant amount of time will pass before I get back to that question.

And I always try to create a correct, complete source citation for each fact, to the best of my ability.

People:

As I collect documents that are for a specific person. I place them into the People folder. Every person associated with that surname gets their own folder.

Again, I’ve added dates after most of these names to help me tell the difference between men with the same name.

At this point, you need to have a system that you can easily follow for naming your files. I like to have everything in chronological order. Whether I am collecting for 1 person, 1 family or 1 cluster, I like that my documents give me a timeline of what is going on and where each person is. So here is the “template” that I use to name files that I’ve downloaded or scanned.

Year, County, Type of Book, Page number, Person’s name.

If I were to open the folder for John M. Smith, you would see folders for his children followed by each document I have for John. Obviously, one of John’s children is my direct ancestor, so he would have a folder of his own apart from John’s folder. I not only keep scans of documents here, but also any transcriptions I’ve done of that document.

Places:

My last folder is for Places. This folder is for documents that don’t necessarily belong to a specific person. For example, when researching county records, I often scan every listing starting with the letter “S” so that if I need to find another person with the surname “Smith”, I don’t have to go back and look for it again. I also include any historical information for that specific county. It might be about a battle that took place there or the story of a cemetery being moved to a new location.

Some of the sub-folders contained here would be:

Indexes

Court Records

Deeds – often broken down by specific book or time range

Tax Records

Marriage Records

Will Book and Pension Records

So that’s it! It took me quite a while to come up with this system, but it works like a dream for me!

Every family that we research has a different puzzle to be solved. Who were the parents? Have I found all of the siblings? Was the person who witnessed that deed related in some way?

Because every family is different, doesn’t it make sense that customizing each Family Group Sheet would be helpful? Sometimes, I’d like to have information for more than just a couple and their children. I wasn’t able to make the changes that I wanted to with the current format of the Family Group Sheet that I had originally created. To help with this, I’ve created an updated version of the half-sheet FGS and it is now available in the “Downloads” tab at the top of the screen. I’m deleting the old version as this new version looks exactly the same, but has more flexibility than the original version did.

I have 3 specific families that I have been working on recently that I am using the “Amped-Up” FGS to help me with. The video will show you what I did to keep track of all of the pieces for these puzzles.

For the first family, both the husband and his wife were born in Europe and met after arriving in the US. I wanted to add cells to their Family Group Sheet to keep track of any information I had found related to their immigration. When I attempted to add those cells to the group sheet, the formatting was not behaving the way that I wanted. With the updated FGS, I am able to add as many cells as I’d like to the form.

The second family puzzle was a little more detailed. I have been trying to find all of the children of James Conn Sr, who was born in 1751. He did not leave a will, but I know that the land was passed on to his children based on various deeds that I have found after James’ death. Some children indicated that they were selling their 1/11th share of the land. Some grandchildren indicated that land they were selling had been passed on to them from their parents and James Conn’s original patent was mentioned in the deed. I’m attempting to find all of James’ children to see if anything in their records would tell me the name of James’ wife. In order to prove who the children were, I wanted to search for any deed records for James’ children, his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren. I did not want to create group sheets for every great-grandchild, but I wanted a way to keep the lists of names managable. I have found a way to do that using my updated FGS.

For the third family, I am attempting to solve the mystery of a previously unknown sister from Kansas. I wanted a way to keep the information for 3 generations of the family all on one FGS so that I would know where to be looking for records and in what time period.

Remember, the updated half-sheet FGS is available in the “Downloads” tab at the top of the blog. That is the base for the techniques that I’ll be sharing in today’s video tutorial. Maybe this video will help you think of some ways to customize your own group sheet. If it does, I’d love to hear from you!

I’m continuing in my never-ending quest to find information on my ancestor, John Smith. One of his great-grandsons had a short biography which indicated that John was an early settler of Danville, Kentucky so I’ve been trying to find the “missing link” to find John’s parents and to prove a jump from the Danville area to Russell County.

When working in pre-1850 time period, land records and tax records become your best friend. However, when looking at the tax records for the times, I see FIVE different men named John Smith! In order to attempt to tell these 5 men apart, I am turning to land records.

I always feel like I am missing something when I read multiple deeds. They are often quite long and the metes and bounds descriptions tend to make my eyes cross! But the records are so important, I felt that I HAD to find a way to see all of the information in one snapshot. I thought about how a Family Group Sheet gives you all of the basic information for each member of the family and based on that, decided to modify a family group sheet specifically to show information on all of the land transactions for a specific person. I’ve decided to call it a Family Land Sheet.

My idea was that each part of a group sheet would have an equal partner on the land sheet.

Child’s name = County and Book, Birth becomes Date of land purchase with the name of seller, Death becomes Date of land sale with the name of buyer, Marriage becomes witnesses and people mentioned in the deed (neighbors).

I decided to shorten the top section so that I only have names and birth-death information. And I decided I would like to have a column for the number of acres and amount paid as well as a column for comments.

Here’s the top of my Group Sheet

And the top of my Land Sheet.

So now I’m beginning to go through the deeds that I have scanned and filling in the information and even though I’m just getting started, I can see that it is going to be a tremendous help.

I spent the weekend transferring re-discovered files from an external drive into my Google Drive and while doing so, I discovered a few discrepancies in the files names of some records. Specifically, some file names used the abbreviation “Bk” while some spelled out the word “Book”. While I was updating those, I also added a new level of detail to the file names.

In my genealogy notes in Word, I’ve linked each document referenced to the digital file in Google Drive. My notes include a cropped image showing just the section that pertained to my ancestor, but if I want to examine the full document, I can click on the link to open the document in Google Drive. After modifying so many file names, I realized I would need to go back to re-link all of the documents.

But as I went through my note file, I tested each link and they all worked! Chalk up one more advantage to storing on Google Drive – the link is not related to the file name itself, just it’s location in my Drive.

I have an 8 x 5½ genealogy planner. I spent a lot of time selecting a planner cover that looked professional so that I could take it with me anywhere and not have to worry about looking childish (as I am very often drawn to bright colors!). I ordered pages in a design that I find beautiful and that bring me a feeling of nostalgia. All of this to “draw” me to the planner. I love to hold it and to flip through the pages. Because I am so drawn to it, it motivates me to keep it organized.

I have a very specific format for my pages and I’ve created many templates specifically to fit in my binder. In short, it contains all of the information that I have on a family without actually having copies of each document. I love my planner.

I take the planner with me to the library and on any trip that doesn’t allow me to bring my full sized binders or when I might be without internet – such as in the car or at my mother’s house. Whenever I have free time – even if it’s sitting in the car waiting for a family member to finish an appointment or sports practice or just relaxing at the park on a pretty day – I can flip through my planner and try to read things with a fresh eye and make a list of questions or research plans. I have research logs, group sheets, chronological notes, lists of resources, research questions, a page for each resource researched, etc.

I’ve been working on updating all of my files. Making sure every file has been removed from flash drives and download folders and placed into my Google Drive. The files have been renamed according to my naming convention as they have been transferred to this “final destination”. Today, I’m trying to update a “to do” list based on notes that I’ve written to myself in the planner.

I’m trying to consolidate all of the notes I’ve written and lists that I’ve made to put them onto the forms that I’ve created so that I can get them into the planner with the organization method I’ve come up with. But what I find is that my notes are confusing to me. And I always feel like I’ve been soooo thorough while I’m writing them! Ha!! Lots of lists! Lists with check marks, lists with things crossed out, lists with stars and circles – but very few indications of what the lists ARE. I can tell if they are lists of pages from an index to look at in a book or if they are scans that I wanted or that I’ve scanned, but how about an occasional TITLE? What book did the index pages go to? What what I looking for? What could I NOT find? What film did I scan? Did I move those scans to the Google Drive?

So I’ve decided that I need a specific format. Often, I email myself from the library giving a short description of what I was researching and what I found or didn’t find. So if I were to always include the date on my notes/lists, I could look for the email from that date and that would help me to know what questions I was specifically trying to find. If I include the title of whatever I was looking at (this seems like quite a DUH!) then I would probably save myself from a lot of reworking. And if I would take a few seconds to just indicate on my note where the files or photocopies were placed, that would save me from looking for digital files that “I know” I’ve scanned, but can’t find.

So I’m going to put a reminder in the front cover of my planner. Date – Resource (film number or call number) – Location saved. Surely, that wouldn’t be so hard! And it would save me some frustration when I’m trying to consolidate things.

No great genealogy revelation here. Just a motivation to myself to do it.

Once again, I find myself with some unexpected time to work on some genealogy and I decided that I would work on creating something I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while.

Last year, I retired from teaching and I brought home a lot of teaching materials that I thought might be helpful in presenting or organizing my genealogy work. One of those things was a big stack of sentence strips. Elementary teachers use the 3” x 24” sentence strips to make games and flash cards and to help students practice handwriting, sentence structure and such. I used mine to make labels around my classroom because they are very colorful. You can get these strips in packages of 75-100 for $5 – $10 depending on if you buy them online or at a teacher supply store. Even stores like Walmart carry them. (In fact, as I look at the website now, I see they have wipe-off strips. Hmmm…..)

I’ve looked at these strips for a long time and thought that they would be perfect for making timelines. The strips are different on the front and back and my vision was that the timeline would be on the multi-lined side and the side with 1 line only could be used for notes. So I played around with them last night and I like where this is going so far.

I decided to make the timelines in 10 year chunks – to go along with census records. I decided that the focus of my timelines would be locations. Could I discover an un-researched area that I should be spending more time looking at based on basic census information? Especially after comparing locations for various people at a certain time? Could I determine a migration pattern for various lines in my research?

I made marks 2 ½ inches apart and left a little extra room at one end to write the name of the person I was tracking. After writing some examples on some scrap pieces, I decided that the strip would be oriented vertically. I have a column for the year, location, type of record and short notes. If I want to include a longer note, for example – more details on a land grant location, then I write a small arrow to show that there is more information on the back.

I like the idea that I can line up these strips to look for patterns and information that I might not have noticed otherwise. I don’t think this will be the first time that I’ve mentioned that I’m a very visual learner, so this helps me a lot.

When I am not using the strips, I can clip them together with a binder clip and hang them on the bulletin board near my desk.

One simple example I can show is how I can determine the potential birth location for a person. When I place the strip for one of John M. Smith’s son-in-laws (Thomas Simpson) next to HIS father’s strip, I can see that it is likely that Thomas was born in Wayne County, Kentucky. Because I don’t have proof of that yet, I put the location in parenthesis. I certainly could have figured this out without the strips, but it is an easy example to show.

I decided that my goal for today’s project would be to try to determine the most likely location that John M. Smith was living for the 1820 census since I believe there is literally a John Smith in EVERY 1820 census.

First, I made my strip for John. I have a lot of information for John, but it only spans a 9 year time frame. Because I have found John listed near 2 future in-law families in the 1826 and 1827 tax records, I decided to make strips for 3 generations for each of those families plus the other 2 sets of future in-laws who I haven’t done as much research on. I kept the color for each family the same. Luckily, the package of strips contains 5 different colors, so I can have John plus the 4 in-law families.

When I line up the strips for the key people in the 5 families, I can overlap them so that I am only seeing the year and the location. I find it quite interesting that all 4 of the in-law families were living in Wayne County in 1820. Would it be out of the question to think that perhaps John M. lived in Wayne County at that time as well?

I believe there are 4 different John Smiths in Wayne County around this time. I’ve collected deeds and tax records for every John Smith in Wayne County between 1815 and 1825 (when a portion of Wayne County became the area of Russell County that John lived in) but I have not had the time to transcribe and really analyze them. Before this, I didn’t know if I wanted to put that much time into a wild guess, but it seems like more of an educated guess now and I’m anxious to see what kind of information might be hiding in the records that I scanned, but haven’t read. I think I’ll also go back and collect deeds for each of the “in-law families”.

My next goal will be to see if I can match land records to tax records to see if I can rule out any of the John Smiths in the area because based on tax records, my John did not own any land at this time. I can see that for that task, it will soon be time to fire up the Excel program!!